concentration of the trade into special neighbourhoods, the
old state of things lingered on.

First of all we must distinguish between the two branches
of the trade, (1) the cloth trade, usually called the woollen
trade, and (2) the worsted trade, sometimes called the woollen
stuff trade. 2 For the cloth or woollen trade the wool used
was short wool, prepared for the process of spinning by card-
ing : for the worsted trade long wool was used, and this was
prepared for spinning by the process of combing. Both

1 Devonshire was also a centre for light woollens which lost much work to
the North (see Clapham, Woollen and Worsted Industries, 1907, p. 15).

2 For the best account of the differences between woollen and worsted, see
Clapham, The Woollen and Worsted Industries.



138 THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832

woollens and worsteds were spun and then woven, but after
woollen cloth was woven, it passed through additional processes,
unnecessary in the case of worsted goods. First it was felted
(milling or fulling were the terms generally used), that is to
say, by pressure and moisture the fibres of the cloth were inter-
locked and the cloth made thick and opaque. After the felt-
ing was done, the fibres were raised, till a nap was formed on
the surface and this nap was then shorn off. These last pro-
cesses were called ' finishing.' The distinction between the
two classes of goods has been thus described : ' The worsted
fabric is not homogeneous like the fulled cloth, but is
reticulated like linen and cotton fabrics.' * Into the various
products of the worsted branch, the camblets, shalloons, cali-
mancoes, tammies, and others, it is impossible to enter here ;
roughly they all come under the head of what we call woollen
stuffs as opposed to cloth.

The two branches, as we have seen, were distinct and their
interests sometimes differed. We will deal first with the
woollen branch.

%

Woollen or Cloth Trade

Although the South- West district remained and still remains
an important centre for the production of the highest quality
of cloth, much of its trade passed to the West Riding of York-
shire, and Leeds and Huddersfield became the chief woollen
centres.

The woollen industry in the South- West counties had early
become a highly developed and capitalised industry, with big
master manufacturers on the one side, and more or less organised
bodies of operatives on the other. The former were called
4 Gentlemen Clothiers.' They bought the wool and employed
various classes of persons to work it up for them. As trade
increased in the early years of the nineteenth century many
of these gentlemen clothiers turned merchants as well. 2

The high-water mark of the prosperity in the South- West is
usually put at 1816 or 1817. After that the decline began.
The coarser trade went up to Yorkshire, where attention
was early paid to the middle and lower qualities of woollens.
The migration to the North of the woollen industry was not

1 Bischoff, History of the Woollen and Worsted Manufactures, 1842, ii. p. 402.

2 See Report of Committee on South- West Woollen Clothiers' Petition, 1802-3
(Ed. Sheppaid).



THE WOOLLEN AND WORSTED WORKERS 139

affected so much by the introduction of the earlier kinds of
machinery in the North as by the later developments of steam
power. t

Yorkshire had had a flourishing woollen industry for cen-
turies. Unlike the gentleman clothier of the South- West, the
typical Yorkshire cloth manufacturer was a small master
manufacturer, much like the men described by Defoe, living
on a few acres of ground, working up the wool himself and
carrying it into market. In spite of the introduction of
machinery and the growth of the factory system, these small
domestic manufacturers increased in number. Round the
clothing towns the land was cut up into small holdings, and
there was an increase of this system after 1795. 1 Arthur
Young described in 1793 the ' mixture of pasturage and manu-
facture ' near Leeds. At Pudsey, he says, ' the common size
holding, rather than farm, is from two to five acres, which let
at 30s. to 50s. an acre. . . . Yet the same land, twenty-five
years ago, let, though grass, at only 10s. an acre ; the vast
rise being occasioned entirely by the manufacture. . . . These
little grass farmers buy the wool they work, and go through
the whole operation of converting it into cloth, going to market
twice a week to sell it.' 2 ' I viewed the Cloth Hall on a market
day, and the scene was animated ; but I could not help being
struck with the reflection, that such an immense number of
men were idle, twice a week, to come from all parts of the
clothing country, in order for half a dozen to execute business
which might as well be performed by one woman ; or, if these
men inhabited towns, who would, instead of a day, lose not
more than an hour : one-third of the productive time of such
multitudes thus lost, to say the least, is a disadvantage attend-
ing this mode of spreading a manufacture.' 3

This domestic system, in spite of Arthur Young's strictures,
lived long in Yorkshire, and was only finally extinguished in
the nineteenth century, by the coming of the power-looms.
It adapted itself successfully to new conditions, for the factory
system and the domestic system went on side by side, various
processes, such as carding, slubbing, and spinning, being done
in factories, and the rest at home. Small manufacturers sur-
vived the rise of the big manufacturers represented by Mr.
Gott of Leeds. As late as 1858, Baines, speaking of the Leeds
district, describes it much as Arthur Young did : '. . . the

1 Report of Committee on State of Woollen Manufacture, 1806, p. 444.

2 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvii. p. 309. 3 Ibid., p. 311.



140 THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832

Manufacturers of the outlying districts bring the cloth made
in their looms, twice in the week, to be sold to the merchants in
the two great cloth halls of this town.' 1 The great factories, he
says, with ' the power of capital, the power of machinery and
the saving of time,' have not materially affected the system
of domestic and village manufacture. ' They [the small
manufacturers] combined to establish joint-stock mills, where
each shareholder takes his own wool, and has it cleaned, dyed,
carded and spun : then, taking the warp or weft to his own
house or workshop, he has it woven by the hand-loom, often
by members of his own family. The cloth is afterwards fulled
at the mill, washed and tentered.' 2

Yorkshire, in fact, with its number of small manufacturers
who combined a semi-domestic system with the use of steam
for various processes, outstripped the South-West with its
capitalised system and its water power.

Worsted Trade

Norwich had long been the centre of the worsted industry,
' the chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm ' as
Macaulay called her, but it was in the middle of the eighteenth
century that she ' attained the greatest prosperity.' She was
famous not only for the making but for the dyeing of worsted
fabrics. The years from 1743 to 1763 are counted her happiest
days. 3 The trade was conducted by merchant manufacturers,
' the acknowledged aristocracy of the city, opulent men and
generally surrounded by thsir dependents, they had some-
thing of a lordly bearing. ... To improve their carriage they
were sometimes accustomed to learn the use of the small sword.
. . . From this probably they derived their peculiar air on
entering a drawing room. What with shouting, scraping, stamp-
ing and bowing, a well-bred gentleman made as much bustle
at the door as if an ambassador had just returned from a
foreign court.' 4 They were men of remarkable resource,
and what they lost by the competition of cotton goods at
home, they gained by increasing their foreign trade. ' Their
travellers penetrated through Europe, and their pattern-
cards were exhibited in every principal town, from the frozen

1 Baines, Yorkshire Past and Present ', p. 655. 2 Ibid., p. 656.

3 James, op. cit., p. 259.

4 James, op. cit. t p. 261, quoting from Settex, East Anglian newspaper,
February 7, 1832.



THE WOOLLEN AND WORSTED WORKERS 141

plains of Moscow to the milder climes of Lisbon, Seville, and
Naples.' l The yarn for the manufacture was for the most
part spun in the neighbouring counties, but, in spite of the
difficulties of transit, some of the wool was sent to be spun in
Yorkshire, and even as far north as Westmoreland. 2

In the middle years of the eighteenth century the worsted
trade in the West Riding of Yorkshire began to increase very
rapidly. It was no new importation, for the industry had
been there before 1700, but between 1750-60, whilst Norwich
was flourishing, Yorkshire too greatly increased her trade,
and many men who had formerly made cloth now turned to
the worsted branch. The structure of the industry differed
from that at Norwich. ' Merchants had in abundance sprung
up, who rode from town to town, and valley to valley, to
purchase those goods which were mostly shipped to the con-
tinent of Europe. A new road to wealth had been opened
the farmer either forsook the tilling of the ground to follow
altogether the stuff business, or else carried it on as a domestic
employment along with the cultivation of the land, and with
thrifty habits, was often in an incredibly short time, enabled
to purchase his homestead and farm. The art spread into the
most remote dells, as well as in the towns and villages of the
south-western portion of the Riding.' 3

After 1763 the Norwich trade began to decline. This was
partly due to the growth of trade in Yorkshire, partly to the
quarrels with the American colonies, which, even before the
outbreak of war, hit Norwich hard. When Arthur Young
visited and described Norwich in 1771, it was still considered
the most important centre of the worsted trade, with about
12,000 looms which gave employment to some 72,000 persons
in and near the town. The value of the trade in Norfolk and
the adjoining districts he estimated at l,200,000. 4 A year
later (1772) the value of the worsted trade in the West Riding
was estimated for Parliament as some 1,404,000. James
calculates that by 1774 no fewer than 84,000 persons were
employed in the trade in Yorkshire. 6

The American war, with its continental complications, caused
great depression in the whole industry ; when peace came and
trade revived Norwich never recovered her position, whereas
the Yorkshire trade throve and prospered. It must not,

1 James, op. cit., p. 308, quoting Old Monthly Magazine for 1798.

8 James, op. cit., p. 253. 3 James, op, cit., p. 267.

4 Quoted James, op. cit., pp. 271, 272. 8 Op. cit., pp. 284, 285.



142 THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832

however, be supposed that the Norwich trade decayed away
at once. In the twelve years after the American war it was
still great, though not growing. Its final ruin is often attri-
buted to the French war, but it must be remembered that till
1818 Norwich retained the monopoly of fine stuffs, and still
employed about ten thousand looms. 1

Norwich was losing her trade to Yorkshire long before there
was any question of the introduction of machinery, but her
downfall was, no doubt, hastened by her inability to adapt
herself to new conditions. The south-west of Yorkshire had
overwhelming natural advantages. The streams of numerous
small valleys supplied water power for machinery, and, when
the age of the steam engine came, coal and iron were close at
hand. The rivers and streams helped also the creation of a
canal system for the transit of goods. Hence it is more than
doubtful whether Norfolk could have held her own, however
eagerly she had adopted every new invention. As it was,
her merchant manufacturers would not take the risk of intro-
ducing machinery among a hostile population who feared
that their livelihood would be taken from them. Their enter-
prise and inventive gifts spent themselves on devising new
stuffs, many of them mixtures of silk and wool, such as Norwich
crape, poplin, or ' Challis,' some of which suited the whims of
fashion and gave Norwich from time to time a gleam of her
old prosperity. But no sooner had a new fabric become
popular than Yorkshire began to make it, and to make it
cheaper, 2 and the Norwich manufacturers had to turn their
minds to new fields. The gleams of prosperity were transient,
and by 1838 there were only about five thousand looms in
Norwich, and of these about a fifth were idle. 3

In Yorkshire on the other hand, although the worsted trade
did not increase during the first years of the French war,
progress was made in utilising new inventions. Also, before
the end of the eighteenth century Yorkshire began to dye
her own goods instead of sending them south to be dyed. 4
Hitherto Norwich, London, and Coventry had been the chief
dyeing centres, and goods were shipped from London for the
Continent. As soon as Yorkshire took to dyeing her own
goods, Yorkshire merchants began to ship the goods from

1 James, op. cit., p. 306.

2 Yorkshire early devoted herself to the manufacture of cheap goods (see
Baines, Yorkshire Past and Present, p. 644).

* James, op. cit., p. 483. 4 James, op. cit., p. 314.



THE WOOLLEN AND WORSTED WORKERS 143

Liverpool and Hull to other countries. Unlike the merchant
manufacturers of Norwich, the merchants in the West Riding
were, as a rule, a separate class from the manufacturers. 1 The
manufacturers might be quite small men, buying the wool and
working it up themselves, or they might be big men buying
the wool and distributing it through agents to spinners and
weavers, from whom they received it back, ready for delivery
to the merchants in the Piece Hall at Halifax or Bradford. 2
The big manufacturers drove out the small men more quickly
in Yorkshire worsteds than in Yorkshire woollens where power-
looms were introduced later.

Like all other trades dependent on foreign markets the
worsted trade had considerable fluctuations during the early
years of the nineteenth century, but it suffered less than the
other textiles, though the rosy picture given by the stuff manu-
facturers in 1823 was perhaps overdrawn. ' During the last
eventful thirty years, the manufacture of long wool had never
languished ; the operative hands had been fully employed ;
and the master manufacturer had been enabled to give a rate
of wages sufficient to afford to the labourer the means of sub-
sistence, even in times of scarcity.' 3 We may take as a sober
estimate the calculation of James that the trade in the West
Riding doubled between 1810-20, increased by two-thirds
between 1820-25, and by a seventh between 1825-30. 4



II. THE SPINNERS

No process changed its character more completely during the
Industrial Revolution than the process of spinning. It begins
as a cottage art carried on by women and children plying their
distaff or spinning wheel ; it ends as a factory industry carried
on by machine worked by power with men and children to
minister to the wants of the machine. The spinning of wool
or worsted and it will be convenient for this purpose to
comprise worsted under the head of wool was an old-estab-
lished and widespread art. The typical family would prepare
its own wool and send it to the village weaver to be woven.
Such a system remained in vogue in some districts till the end

1 There were of course some who were both merchants and manufacturers.

2 Bradford after 1800 grew more important than Halifax, becoming the
undisputed capital of the worsted trade.

3 James, op. cit. y p. 397. * James, op. cit., pp. 388, 408, 429-30.



144 THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832

of the eighteenth century. 1 Eden's thrifty and frugal Cumber-
land woman in 1796 ' who spins wool for her neighbours about
15 weeks a year, and earns 4d. a day and victuals ' 2 was
a survival of this old system. By 1760 spinning was a
specialised industry, carried on by the women and even more
by the children in the counties round the big centres of trade,
for wool staplers who brought the wool and took away the yarn
when spun.

The system by which the work was given out differed in the
different districts. With the great difficulties of transit before
the improvements in roads and the making of canals, it must
have been no easy business to convey the wool to and fro.
' The wool after being combed was sent out by travellers in
tilted carts, who left it with the spinners in one journey, and
took back the yarn, paying the amount of spinning, at the
next.' 3 The spinners near at hand, such as the relatives of
the weaver, would naturally have the preference, but so great
was the demand for yarn that the Norwich trade gave employ-
ment to spinners beyond the boundaries of Norfolk and Suffolk, 4
in Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Bedford, and in early days wool
was even sent up to Yorkshire to be turned into yarn and then
brought back. 5 The growth of the worsted trade in Yorkshire
from 1750 to 1760 gave a great stimulus to the learning
of spinning, and numerous spinning schools were set up for
the instruction of the young. The trade pushed into the
Colne and Burnley districts of Lancashire, but was over-
powered by the competition of the growing cotton trade. Peel
and other manufacturers were spreading their factories through
the valleys of North and East Lancashire and attracting away
the worsted spinners by higher wages. 6

What were the conditions under which spinning was done ?

1 e.g. Anglesey. Annals of Agriculture, 14. 408 (1790): 'Almost every
farmer combs, cards and spins his own wool, and sends it to the weaver, who
charges from i^d. to 3d. per yard, according to the fineness and breadth of the
web. There is none exported, either wool or woollen cloth.'

2 Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. ii. p. 75.

3 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, p. 272.

4 Of Suffolk, Prof. Unwin says ( Victoria County History of Suffolk, vol. ii.
p. 253) ' the chief occupation of the county, so far as the textile manufactures
was concerned, was the combing of wool and the spinning of yarn for the
worsted weavers of Norwich.' A moderate estimate of the numbers employed
in spinning in the middle of the eighteenth century he gives as 36,000 women
and children.

e James, op. cit., pp. 252 f. 6 James, op. cit., p. 633.



THE WOOLLEN AND WORSTED WORKERS 145

It is clear that they varied greatly, even as the homes of the
spinners varied. One advantage was that it could sometimes be
carried on out of doors. ' On fine days,' we read of Bradford,
' the women and children might be found in the streets and
lanes fully employed with the labour of spinning upon the
one-thread wheel, in which they greatly excelled ' : x and
many a traveller through a village would see ' Contentment
spinning at the cottage door.' Possibly the children whose
hands were being thus closely kept from the mischief with
which Satan would otherwise have provided them, might
have had a different tale to tell, and Arthur Young, who thanks
to the Woollen Bill 2 was under no illusions as to the benevo-
lence of the woollen manufacturers, gave lurid pictures of the
state to which the spinners had been reduced, even before
the competition with machinery had seriously begun. In an
attack on the Norwich master manufacturers in 1788 he talks
of ' the sufferings of thousands of wretched individuals, willing
to work, but starving from their ill-requited labour : of whole
families of honest, industrious children offering their little
hands to the wheel, and asking bread of the helpless mother,
unable through this well-regulated manufacture, to give it
them.' 3

But whatever the hardships of the hand-spinner's lot, there
is no doubt that the introduction of machinery caused wide-
spread suffering to those for whom the developments in the
industry brought no work in its place. Machinery for spinning
and for the previous processes in the woollen and worsted in-
dustry was adopted much later than in the cotton industry,
nor was this entirely due to want of enterprise in the trade
which Arthur Young taunted with being * sluggish, inactive,
dead.' 4 It arose partly from the weakness of the material
which broke more readily than cotton when subjected to any
strain.

It will be convenient to deal with the introduction of machin-
ery into the different districts in turn.



Introduction of Machinery into the South-West

The use of the jenny was introduced into the South- West
clothing district first in 1776 at Shepton Mallet, where it caused

1 James, op. cit., p. 589. * See note 3 on p. 136.

3 Annah of Agriculture, vol. be. p. 269. * Ibid., vol. vii. p. 164.

K



146 THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832

considerable riots. 1 In a petition to the House of Commons
we are given the spinners' point of view :

'A Petition of the Wire-drawers, Card-board-makers, Card-
makers, Scribblers, Spinners, Twisters, Weavers, and others,
employed in the Woollen Manufactory, in Fromeseltvood, Shepton
Mallett, and other Cloth- working Towns in the County of Somerset ;
Setting forth, That a machine called The Spinning Jenny, for carding
and spinning of Wool into Yarn, had been lately introduced and
put in practice in the Town of Shepton Mallett, in the said County;
and that the Petitioners were apprehensive that the same would
be established in every Cloth-working Town throughout the
Counties of Somerset, Gloucester, and Wilts, and would thereby tend
greatly to the Damage and Ruin of many Thousands of the
industrious Poor employed in that Manufacture : And therefore
praying the House to take the Premises into Consideration, and
abolish the Use of the said Spinning Machine in the said County,
being offered to be presented to the House ;

And a Motion being made, and the Question being put, That
the said Petition be brought up ;

It passed in the Negative.' 2

The introduction was by no means universal all over the
district. A note on the proposed Shearmen's Bill of 1804-5,
a Bill which if carried would have limited the number of jennies
one person might possess and the number of spindles on each
jenny, mentions 1784 as the date of its introduction. 3 Of
Trowbridge in Wilts we read in 1795 : ' The machines have
been introduced chiefly within the last six or seven years, and
as the people are much averse to them, they are brought into
use by degrees.' 4 The writers of the Surveys of the Agricul-
ture of Wilts and Somerset, for the Board of Agriculture in
1794, discuss the probable effects of the newly introduced
machinery. By 1803 the transformation was practically
complete. 5 The clothiers had one by one introduced the
system of having * spinning houses ' on their own premises,
and the weavers were filled with apprehension lest they too
should be forced to work under their employer's roof.

At the same time the employers began to use machinery

1 Evidence on Woollen Trade Bill, 1802-3, P- 68.

2 House of Commons Journal, November I, 1776.

3 H.O.,42. 83.

4 Eden, op. cit., vol. iii. p. 802.

5 Hand-spinning still survived in some places (see Minutes of Evidence on
Woollen Trade Bill, 1802-3, p. 14).



THE WOOLLEN AND WORSTED WORKERS 147

for the preliminary processes of carding, slubbing and scrib-
bling necessary to make the wool fit for spinning. 1

The introduction of machinery for these preliminary pro-
cesses and for spinning took place whilst the industry was in
a flourishing condition and able to absorb a great deal of the
labour so displaced. 2 But, without doubt, the more distant
districts suffered by the concentration of work. * The earn-
ings by spinning,' wrote a correspondent from North-East
Cornwall in 1795, 3 ' have, for the last year, been much cur-
tailed, owing to the wool-staplers using spinning engines, near
their place of residence, in preference to sending their wool
into the country to be spun by hand. And whereas a poor
woman and two small children (which is the average house-
hold of a labourer) could heretofore earn fourteen pence per
day, they cannot now earn more than ten pence. . . .'

Eden draws in 1796 a melancholy picture of what the intro-
duction of machinery elsewhere meant to a village that had
hitherto largely subsisted on hand-spinning. The place is
Seend in Wiltshire, notfarf rom the clothing centre of Melksham. 4
' As the chapelry consists almost entirely of dairy farms, and
consequently affords very little employment in husbandry,
except during the hay-harvest, the labouring poor are very
dependent on the neighbouring towns, where the cloth manu-
facture is carried on ; but, unfortunately, since the introduc-
tion of machinery, which lately took place, hand-spinning has